I first noticed them about two weeks ago: the squares. Grids of black, orange, and green square emoji flooding my Twitter feed. The people posting them seemed to be happy about them. It turned out they came from a game: Wordle, a daily word-guessing game by artist/programmer Josh Wardle. It’s simple enough: there’s a new word each day, and you have six chances to guess it. Get it right, and you get a cute little emoji grid to show off how you did. With the rise of Wordle
Entrepreneurship is in a new moment, with a new set of circumstances and pressures, and a new collective cadre of players. Success in venture capital going forward will become less about chasing momentum and more about embracing collaboration. This is no small mindset shift. It’s an evolutionary imperative. The successful founders of tomorrow simply won’t look like the ones who came before them, and they certainly won’t look like today’s venture capitalists. Surviving
With the announcement of its $69 billion deal to buy gaming giant Activision Blizzard, Microsoft suddenly has a lot to say about the metaverse. And investors seem to be taking it seriously. “This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console, and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse,” the company said in the deal announcement on January 18. At least in the near term, the Activision buy is mostly abou
It seems like every other week lately, we see some new app or other that promises to revolutionize the way we organize our lives. And I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to salivating over high-potential (alleged) organizational miracles. The problem, though, is that adopting most of these apps is an organizational obligation in and of itself. You have to import your info, learn a whole new system, and devote tons of time to perfecting your fancy new framework—setting up the
Amazon has reportedly ended its controversial program through which workers tweeted nice things about the company on social media, closing the book on what cynics might call a case study in how to never market. The program was a PR solution launched back in 2018 as Amazon was facing increasing criticism for the work conditions in its fulfillment centers. The company was growing at dizzying speeds, adding tens of thousands of new warehouse workers per year (and still is!), but a number of news re
It’s easy to grow numb to numbers. The projected loss, in dollars, from what is clearly an unabating wave of cyberattacks has gotten so extreme that it has become, well, meaningless. Seven years ago (a lifetime in technology), CSO reported that companies and governments were losing $400 billion per year to cybercrime. Truth is, cybercrime is just getting warmed up, fueled by sophisticated criminal enterprises and state-sponsored terrorists flocking to cyberspace. It’s hardly news.
Go into any restaurant or coffee shop, and you’ll see a familiar scene: Individuals or groups of people seated around tables, holding a beverage in one hand, shoulders and backs crouched forward as they scroll on their smartphones with the other. (Bonus points if they’ve got wireless earphones in.) This would appear to be the antithesis of mindful eating. But with the recent explosion of mindfulness and meditation techniques, it may be that utilizing our smartphones can help us fi
Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota says she’s feeling good about her chances of passing the first significant antitrust reform since the dawn of the internet. Just a few days have passed since last Thursday’s hearing to mark up the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, introduced with Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. The bill would prohibit Big Tech platforms such as Amazon and Apple from taking advantage of their gatekeeper status to give themselves advan
So, Wordle is having a moment, huh? If you haven’t played the daily word game, you must. You get six tries to guess a five-letter word. Each guess tells you if you have a letter in the right place, a correct letter in the wrong place, or a wrong letter. Each guess is supposed to get you closer, except for the time the word was “knoll” and everyone on the internet lost their collective minds. But I digress. The worst part about Wordle (which is itself perfection) is that you
In the early days of the pandemic, there were some clear corporate winners. We all devoured episodes of Tiger King, while singing the praises of Netflix. We hopped on our Peloton bikes, wondering why we ever went to the gym. We used DoorDash to bring us our groceries and takeout. Zoom meetings kept us productive (and were used nearly as often for virtual get-togethers and happy hours with friends and family). And we spent those long hours in isolation deep diving through Etsy and Shopify to find